At last a long consultation was held, at the close of which Mr. and Mrs.
Brewster were called into the council of physicians. "We have discovered," said Dr. Lord, a man high up in the profession who was considered the final authority, "that the ball joint of your daughter"s hip has been fractured in such a way that it can never heal. There is one inevitable result of this condition, and that is tuberculosis of the bone. If not arrested this will in time communicate itself to the bones of the upper part of the body and terminate fatally. There is only one way to prevent this outcome and that is amputation of the limb before the disease gets a hold on the system."
"You mean, cut her leg off?" asked Mrs. Brewster faintly.
"Yes," said Dr. Lord shortly. He was a man of few words.
Sahwah was stunned when she heard the verdict of the surgeons. She knew little about disease and it seemed wildly impossible to her that this limb of hers which had been so strong and supple a month ago would become an agent of death if not amputated. She was in an agony of mind.
Never to swim again! Never to run and jump and slide and skate and dance! Always to go about on crutches! Before the prospect of being crippled for life her active nature shrank in unutterable horror. Death seemed preferable to her. She buried her face in the pillow in such anguish that the watchers by the bedside could not stand by and see it.
After a day of acute mental suffering her old-time courage began to rear its head and she made up her mind that if this terrible thing had to be done she might as well go through with it as bravely as possible. She resigned herself to her fate and urged her parents to give their consent to the operation. Poor Mrs. Brewster was nearly out of her mind with worry over the affair.
"When will you do it?" asked Sahwah, struggling to keep her voice steady.
"In about a week," said Dr. Lord, "when you get a little stronger."
Nyoda went home heartsick from the hospital that day. Sahwah had asked her to write to Dr. Hoffman, her old friend in camp, and tell him the news. With a shaking hand she wrote the letter. "Poor old Dr. Hoffman,"
she said to herself, "how badly he will feel when he hears that Sahwah is hurt and he can do nothing to help her."
Sahwah had never dreamed how many friends she had until this misfortune overcame her. Boys and girls, as well as old people and little children, horrified at the calamity, came by the dozen to offer cheer and comfort.
Her room was filled to overflowing with flowers. Even "old Fuzzytop,"
whom Sahwah had tormented nearly to death, came to offer his sympathy and present a potted tulip. Stiff and precise Miss Muggins came to say how she missed her from the Latin cla.s.s. Aunt Phoebe forgave all the jokes she had made at her expense and sent over a crocheted dressing jacket made of fleecy wool.
"Don"t feel so badly, Nyoda dear," she said one day as Nyoda sat beside her in the depths of despair. The usual jolly teacher had now no cheery word to offer. The prospect of the gay dancing Sahwah on crutches for the remainder of her life was an appalling tragedy. "I can act out "The Little Tin Soldier" quite realistically--then," went on Sahwah, her mind already at work to find the humor of the situation. But Nyoda sat staring miserably at the flowers on the dresser.
"Telegram for Miss Brewster," said the nurse, appearing in the doorway.
"A telegram for me?" asked Sahwah curiously, stretching out her hand for the envelope. She tore it open eagerly and read, "Don"t operate until I come. Dr. Hoffman." "He"s coming!" cried Sahwah. "Dr. Hoffman is coming!
He said if I ever broke a bone again he would come and set it! Poor Doctor, how disappointed he"ll be when he finds he can"t "set it"!"
Dr. Hoffman arrived the next day.
"Vell, vell, Missis Sahvah," he said anxiously as he saw her lying so ominously still on the bed, "you haf not been trying to push somevon across de top of Lake Erie, haf you?" Sahwah smiled faintly. A ray of sunlight seemed to have entered the room with the doctor, also a gust of wind. He had thrown his hat right into a bouquet of flowers and his hair stood on end and his tie was askew with the haste he had made in getting to the hospital from the train. "Now about this hip, yes?" he said in a businesslike tone. Without any ceremony he brushed the nurse aside and unwrapped the bandages. "Ach so," he said, feeling of the joint with a practised hand, "you did a good job, Missis Sahvah. You make out of your bone a splinter. But vot is dis I hear about operating?" he suddenly exclaimed. "De very idea! Don"t you let dem amputate your leg off! Such fool doctors! It"s a vonder dey did not cut your head off to cure de b.u.mp!" His voice rose to a regular roar. Dr. Lord, coming in at that moment, stopped in astonishment at the sight of this strange doctor standing over his patient. "For vy did you want to amputate her leg off?" shouted Dr. Hoffman at him, dancing up and down in front of him and shaking his finger under his nose. "It is no more diseased dan yours is. And you call yourself a surgeon doctor! Bah! You go out and play in de sunshine and let me take care of dis hip."
"Who the d.i.c.kens are you?" asked Dr. Lord, looking at him as though he thought he were an escaped lunatic.
"Dis is who I am," replied Dr. Hoffman, handing him a card. "I vas in eighteen-ninety-five by de _Staatsklinick_ in Berlin." Dr. Lord fell back respectfully.
"I know someting about dot Missis Sahvah"s bones," went on Dr. Hoffman, "and I know dey vill knit if you gif dem a chance. If all goes vell she vill valk again in t"ree months."
"I"d like to see you do it," said Dr. Lord.
"Patience, my friend," said Dr. Hoffman, "first ve make a little plaster cast." When Mrs. Brewster came in the afternoon she found a strange doctor in command and Dr. Lord and the nurses obeying his orders as if hypnotized. When she went home that night, hope had come to life again in her heart, where it had been dead for more than a week. Dr. Hoffman spent the afternoon having X-ray photographs of the joint made, and sat up all night trying to figure out how those bones could be set so they would knit and still not leave the joint stiff. By morning he had the solution.
The next day--the day the limb was to have been amputated--an operation of a very different nature took place. Dr. Hoffman, looking more like a pastry cook in his operating clothes than anything else, bustled around the operating room keeping the nurses and a.s.sisting physicians on the jump.
"Who"s the Dutchman that"s doing the bossing?" asked a pert young interne of one of the doctors.
"Shut up," answered the doctor addressed, "that"s Hoffman, of the _Staatsklinick_ in Berlin, and the Royal College of Vienna. He was Professor of Anatomy in the _Staatsklinick_ "95-"96, don"t you remember?" he said, turning to one of the other doctors. "He"s a wizard at bonesetting. He performed that operation on Count Esterhazy"s youngest son that kept him from being a cripple." The younger doctor looked at Dr. Hoffman with a sudden respect. The case in question was a famous one in surgical annals.
Dr. Lord, angry as he was at Dr. Hoffman"s arraignment of him before the nurses and visitors, was yet a big enough man to realize that he had a chance to learn something from this sarcastic intruder who had so unceremoniously taken his case out of his hands, and swallowing his wrath, asked permission to witness the operation. "Ach, yes, to be sure," said Dr. Hoffman, with his old geniality. "You must not mind that I vas so cross yesterday," he went on, "it vas because I vas so impatient ven I hear you vanted to amputate dot girl"s leg off. But I forget," he said magnanimously, "you do not know how to set de badly splintered bones so dey vill knit, as I do. Bring all de doctors in you vant to, and all de nurses too. Ve vill haf a _Klinick_."
Thus it was that the large operating room of the hospital was crowded to the very edge of the "sterile field" with eager medical men, glad of the chance to watch Dr. Hoffman at work. "Who is that young girl in here?"
asked Dr. Lord impatiently, as the anaesthetic was about to be administered.
"Some friend of the patient," explained the head nurse. "Hoffman let her in himself." The young girl in question was Medmangi. Dr. Hoffman knew all about her ambition to become a doctor and allowed her to come into the operating room. So she began her career by witnessing one of the most inspired operations of a widely famed surgeon.
When Sahwah came out of the ether she felt as if she were held in a vise. "What"s the matter?" she asked dreamily. "I feel so stiff and queer."
"It"s the cast they put you in," answered her mother.
Sahwah moved her arms carefully to see if they were in working order yet. Lightly she touched the hard substance that surrounded her hip bone. "They didn"t cut it off, did they?" she asked in sudden terror.
She could not tell by the feeling whether she had two legs or one.
Dr. Hoffman, coming in in time to hear the question, snorted violently.
"Don"t talk such nonsense, Missis Sahvah," he said, waving his hands emphatically. "Dot limb is still vere it belongs, and vill be as good as ever ven de cast comes off."
The watchers around the bed that day wore very different expressions from what they had worn all week. Just since yesterday despair had given way to hope and hope to a.s.surance. Her mother and father and Nyoda hovered over the bed with radiant faces, and the Winnebagos, after seeing Sahwah"s favorable condition with their own eyes, retired to Gladys"s barn to celebrate. The rules of the hospital forbade the amount of noise they felt they must make. d.i.c.k Albright smiled his first smile that day since the night of the accident.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE HONOR OF THE WINNEBAGOS.
"For High Style use the Preterite, For Common use the Past, In compound verbal tenses Put the Participle last.
The Perfect Tense with "Avoir"
With the Subject must agree (Or does this rule apply to the Auxiliary "to be"?)."
Migwan, in high spirits, resolved the rules in her French grammar into poetry as she learned them. Regular lessons were gotten out of the way as quickly as possible these days to give more time to the study of history. And to Migwan studying history meant not merely the memorizing of a number of facts attached to dates which might or might not stay in her mind at the crucial time; it was the bringing to life of bygone races and people, and putting herself in their places, and living along with them the events described on the pages. Taking it in this way, Migwan had a very clear and vivid picture of the things she was learning, and her answers to questions showed such a thorough knowledge of her subject that she was regarded as a "grind" at history, while the truth was that she did less "grinding" than the rest of the cla.s.s, who merely memorized figures and facts without calling in the aid of the imagination. So Migwan learned her new history and reviewed her old, and was as happy as the day was long.
As the time approached for the examination she felt more sure of herself every day. The long hours of patient study were about to be rewarded, and she would bring honor to the Winnebagos by winning the Parsons prize. That little point about bringing honor to the Winnebagos was keenly felt by Migwan. Ever since Sahwah had covered herself with undying glory in the game with the Carnegie Mechanics, Migwan felt a longing to distinguish herself in some way also. Sahwah"s fame was widespread, and when any of the Winnebagos happened to mention that they belonged to that particular group, some one was sure to say, "The Winnebago Camp Fire? Oh, yes, it was one of your number who won the basketball championship for the school by making a record jump for the ball, wasn"t it?" The whole group lived in the reflected glory of Sahwah the Sunfish. Now, thought Migwan resolutely, they would have something else to be proud about. In the future people would say, "The Winnebagos?
Oh, yes, it was one of your girls who carried off the Parsons prize in history!"
Migwan thrilled with the joy of it, and plunged more deeply into the pages before her. She was a different girl nowadays from the pale, anxious-faced one who had sat up night after night during the winter, desperately trying to add something to the scanty income by the labor of pen and typewriter. Now she was always happy and sparkling, and performed her household tasks with such a will that her languid mother, lying and watching her, was likewise filled with an ambition to be up and doing. She was never cross with Betty these days, no matter how many fits of temper that young lady indulged in. Professor Green often stopped her in the hall to ask her how she was getting along in her preparation, and offered to lend her reference books which would help her in her study. Everybody seemed to be anxious for her to win the prize, and willing to give her all the help possible.
Migwan did not make the mistake of studying until late the night before the examination. She went to bed at nine o"clock, so as to be in fit condition. When she closed her books after the final study she knew all that was to be learned from them. The examination was held in the senior session room after the close of school. Five pupils partic.i.p.ated. One was Abraham Goldstein, another was George Curtis, who liked Migwan very well and hated Abraham cordially; the other two were girls. They all sat in one row of seats; Migwan first, then George, then Abraham, and behind him the two girls. The lists of questions were given out. "I hardly need to say," said the teacher in attendance, "that the honor system will be in force during this examination."
Migwan made an effort to still the wild beating of her heart and read the questions through. They all appeared easy to her, as she had had such a thorough preparation. George Curtis groaned to himself as he looked them over, for there were two which he saw at a glance he would be unable to answer. Abraham read his and looked thoughtful. Migwan wrote rapidly with a sure and inspired pen until she came to the last question. There she halted in dismay. The question was in the Ancient History group and read, in part, "Who was the invader of Israel before Sennacherib?" For the life of her she could not think of the name of the a.s.syrian invader. Last night the whole thing had been as clear as crystal in her mind. She thought until the perspiration stood out on her forehead; she tried every method of suggestion that she knew, but all in vain; the name still eluded her. While she was trying so desperately to recall the name, George Curtis in the seat behind was watching her. By chance he had caught a glimpse of her paper, and saw the figure 10 followed by an empty s.p.a.ce, so he knew that it was the tenth question she was having trouble with. This happened to be one he knew and he had just written it out in a bold, black hand. He was out of the race for the prize, for there were two whole questions left out on his sheet. By certain signs of distress from the two girls behind him he knew that they, too, were out, and it now lay between Migwan and Abraham. Abraham was not very well liked by the boys since the affair of the statue.
George despised him utterly, and he could not bear to think of his winning that prize.
He watched his chance. It came at last. The teacher dropped her pencil behind her desk, and in the instant when she was picking it up he reached out and pulled Migwan"s hair sharply. When she turned around in surprise he framed with his lips the name "Sargon." She understood it perfectly. Then came a mental struggle which matched Sahwah"s terrific physical one that day in camp. On one side college stood with its doors wide open to welcome her; she heard the plaudits of her friends who expected and wanted her to win the prize; she saw the joy in her mother"s face when she heard the news; she heard the heartfelt congratulations of Nyoda and the Winnebagos who would share in her glory. On the other hand she heard just five ugly words echoing in her ears. "_You didn"t win it honestly!"_ She tried to stifle the voice of science. "I knew it perfectly all the time," she said to herself, "and it only slipped my mind for an instant." "But you forgot," said the voice, "and if he hadn"t told you you wouldn"t have known."
Miserably she argued the question back and forth. It she didn"t win the prize Abraham would, and he could well afford to go to college without the money. "He"d cheat if he had the chance," she told herself. "That doesn"t help you any," p.r.i.c.ked the accuser. "You talk about the honor of the Winnebagos. If you use that information you would be dishonoring the Winnebagos! You"re a cheat, you"re a cheat," it said tauntingly, and a little sparrow on the window sill outside took up the mocking refrain, "Cheat! Cheat!" Stung as though some one had pointed an accusing finger at her, Migwan flung down her pen in despair and resolutely blotted her paper. She handed in her examination with the last half of the last question unanswered, and fled from the room with unseeing eyes. And in the instant when George was trying to tell Migwan the answer, Abraham, who had also forgotten the name of Sargon, glanced over toward George"s paper and saw it written out in his easily readable hand. Without a qualm he wrote it down on his own paper with a triumphant flourish.
There was great surprise throughout the school a few days later when the grades of the examination were made public: Elsie Gardiner, 95; Abraham Goldstein, 98, winner of the Parsons cash prize of $100.
Migwan felt like a wanderer on the face of the earth after losing that history prize. She shrank from meeting the friends who had so confidently expected her to win it, and her own thoughts were too painful to be left alone with. If Hinpoha had been wandering in the Desert of Waiting for the past few months, Migwan was sunk deep in the Slough of Despond. She was at the age when death seemed preferable to defeat, and she wished miserably that she would fall ill of some mortal disease, and never have to face the world again with failure written on her forehead. "Oh, why," she wailed in anguish of spirit, as has many an older and wiser person when confronted with this same unanswerable question, "why was I given this glimpse of Paradise only to have the gate slammed in my face?" That spectre of the winter before, the belief that success would never be hers, gripped her again with its icy hand.